A Huntington Beach school has reopened after being closed for nearly a year due to asbestos concerns.
Ocean View School District school officials said Hope View Elementary School is now free of asbestos, mold and lead as part of a $5 million construction project.
School Board President Gina Clayton-Tarvin said the campus has been painted and prepped since the asbestos was first discovered last fall.
“When we started cracking into the ceilings and the walls here to be able to reconstruct, we found that there was considerable sprayed-on asbestos and we wanted it all gone, we wanted it cleaned out,” she said.
Days after that discovery, 1,600 students in the district were moved out of three elementary schools. They were bussed as far away as Buena Park.
Students at Oak View Elementary will also return for the first time. But they will be taught in portable classrooms.
Lake View Elementary remains closed. There is no time line to reopen it.
At Hope View, teachers are opening boxes that have been in storage for a year. The discovery of asbestos has left parents wondering if the district acted fast enough.
“I'm sure everybody's going to be looking at 20 years down the line, ‘Is my kid going to be sick from asbestos?’ It's a cancer-causing product. What do you do?” said grandmother Libby Olinares Northrup.